To understand the al-Dura affair, it helps to keep one thing in mind: In France, you can't own up to a mistake. This is a country where the law of the Circus Maximus still applies: Vae victis, Woe to the vanquished. Slip, and it's thumbs-down. Not for nothing was Brennus a Gaul. His modern French heirs don't do apologies well, or at all if they can possibly help it. Why should they? That would be an admission of weakness. Blink, and you become the fall guy.

So, in the case of Muhammad al-Dura-a 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli fire during a skirmish in the Gaza strip on September 30, 2000-it was not really to be expected that the journalist who released the 59-second news report, Charles Enderlin, longtime Jerusalem correspondent for France 2 TV, would immediately admit having hastily slapped together sensational footage supplied by the channel's regular Palestinian stringer, and not checked whose bullets had, in fact, killed, or perhaps even not killed, the boy.

Good heavens, this article is a description of institutional ROT and intellectual corruption so deep, so complete..... it reminds me of..... Rathergate!!

In both cases, the mendacious incompetence, bias, and dishonesty of a leading MSM figure is challenged only by people outside of the ponderous hierarchy of the self-important bearers of media "standards" -- yet even when faced with obvious evidence of fabrication and media bias, the media mandarins refuse to come clean."Such a person could not, in the order of things, be seriously threatened by a bunch of activists or scruffy bloggers behind their computer screens questioning his professional judgment. When he dismissed accusations of a cover-up by explaining that he had chosen "not to show the full footage of the child's agony," which would have been "unbearable," he fully expected to be taken on trust. Yet the bloggers and the activists refused to let the story die."

Actually, in some ways this is much worse than even Rathergate, since at least CBS could be shamed into acting against Rather, Mapes, and their merry crew. CBS did not come clean but did feel obliged to respond seriously to the issue. In the case of Enderlin and his Pali-terror propaganda, all these years later, there is still absolutely no willingness of the French media or TV2 to deal at all with the outrageous episode.

Of course, what all of these cases also share is a complete leack of accuracy and a depraved indifference to facts displayed by virtually all of the media who refuse to investigate and expose Enderlin, Menchu, Rather, et al.

Even more incredibly, IIRC the first person I recall sounding the alarm about this video "framing" of the IDF was sounded by one of Jimmy Carter's underlings. I just can't remember the name, but seeing one of Carter's guys make the call was pretty suprising to me.

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